{"id":3164,"date":"2015-06-21T22:51:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T20:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.amiscorbin.com\/?page_id=3164"},"modified":"2015-06-21T22:51:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T20:51:16","slug":"memories-from-the-childhood-of-henry-corbin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.amiscorbin.com\/en\/biography\/memories-from-the-childhood-of-henry-corbin\/","title":{"rendered":"Memories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

\u00a0Translated by\u00a0Matthew Evans-Cockle<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

Henry came into the world on April 14th<\/sup>1903, at #47 Avenue Bosquet in\u00a0Paris.\u00a0\u00a0He was the first-born child to Arthur Corbin and Emilie Jeanne Eug\u00e9nie Fournier.\u00a0\u00a0They named him Eug\u00e8ne, Henry.\u00a0\u00a0Happiness, however, was short lived, for the young mother died ten days later.\u00a0\u00a0Unable to endure the sight of the one responsible for his unhappy loss, Arthur placed the child in the care of a wet nurse.<\/span><\/p>\n

At eight months the infant was still so frail that Arthur\u2019s elder sister, Mrs. Am\u00e9lie Petit Henry, indignant over the lack of care, resolved to bring the child home with her, despite the father\u2019s disapproval.\u00a0\u00a0A few years earlier, Am\u00e9lie had married Emile Petithenry, a man of considerable culture working at the\u00a0Bonne Presse<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0They had no children and occupied a comfortable second story apartment at #46 Rue Grenelle with a kitchen window overlooking the private park of a neighboring townhouse belonging to the Duke of Castries.\u00a0\u00a0Many years later, while dining with the Duke himself, Henry recalled having occasionally admired, from his elevated window view, a young boy of his own age wandering about this lovely park in the company of a governess.<\/span><\/p>\n

Occasionally Henry was taken to his maternal grandmother\u2019s home at #26 Rue Leclerc.\u00a0\u00a0Very advanced in years and surrounded by her memories, she evoked in the child, above all else, an impression of tremendous sadness.\u00a0\u00a0In that cozy sitting room, without understanding why, the child felt overwhelmed.\u00a0\u00a0To the point that, on one occasion, at the age of five, he started wailing and then burst into tears.\u00a0\u00a0Not knowing how to calm him, his grandmother happened upon the auspicious and happy solution of presenting him with a photograph and urging him to give the beautiful woman a kiss.\u00a0\u00a0Intrigued and perhaps somewhat beguiled by the mystery of that kiss, the child calmed down.\u00a0\u00a0From then on he returned without trepidation to his grandmother\u2019s home to steal a look at the \u201cbeautiful woman\u201d (his mother) whose true identity he was far from suspecting, having always called Mrs. Petithenry \u201cmummy\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0From that day onward, however, the seed of a doubt began to take root in him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, shortly after this incident, while his young aunt Adrienne was giving him his bath in his paternal grandparents\u2019 garden at Grecy, Henry said to her:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you find it strange? I have two daddies, but only one mummy.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s odd.\u00a0\u00a0Mummy might well be my aunt?<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it fell to Adrienne, splashing the boy with cold water, to reply:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMight well be\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When, around the age of seven, he learned his true identity, he made more frequent visits to his maternal grandmother, in order to question her.\u00a0\u00a0Not being one for conversation however, the latter preferred to show her grandson photographs and to describe the beautiful figure therein.\u00a0\u00a0She passed away, alone, leaving her one descendant a small nest egg of savings.\u00a0At the time of her death, a violent clatter in the night awakened Henry, then a student living on the Rue Daguerre.\u00a0\u00a0The mirror above the fireplace had come unhooked and fallen, shattering loudly upon the floor.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the summer months the family found themselves back with the paternal grandparents.\u00a0\u00a0Originally from a Norman village, the Pieux family had had a summerhouse built in Grecy, at\u00a0Seine\u00a0en\u00a0Marne, near Courbet.\u00a0\u00a0Henry was fond of the garden with its large lime tree and herbs.\u00a0\u00a0On the other side of the road and just opposite his room there lay a large rose garden.\u00a0\u00a0In June, just as the sun was setting over this flowery parcel of land, the child would sit in ravished contemplation of the landscape, feeling himself as though upon the very threshold of the infinite.\u00a0\u00a0In the daytime he met up with two cheerful accomplices: for music and games there was his Aunt Adrienne, and to tend the herb garden there was his grandfather, a cunning gourmand who often awarded himself a portion of the pickings before bringing them to the kitchen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in\u00a0Paris, with the Petithenrys, life was more orderly.\u00a0\u00a0There was that painful day when it was decided Henry should be shorn of his lovely golden locks before the beginning of classes at La Rochefoucauld (on the corner of Avenue Bosquet and Rue Pierre Nicot).\u00a0\u00a0There was the production of his first reviews, with premonitory titles such as \u201c<\/span>Lumi\u00e8re c\u00e9leste<\/em>\u201d (Celestial Light) and \u201c<\/span>Nord<\/em>\u201d (North).\u00a0\u00a0Carefully selected excerpts from the\u00a0<\/span>Larousse<\/em>\u00a0and other books were recopied upon sheets of colored paper that, despite being originally intended for jam-pots, were deemed of adequate format by the young journalist.\u00a0\u00a0As this work could only be carried out on the Thursday, which was a school holiday, there was already, in this early period, the author\u2019s dreaded problem of \u201caccumulated delays\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cpublication\u201d complete, a reading was performed for his aunt who was wholly won over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry received a children\u2019s magazine called \u201c<\/span>Le cri cri<\/em>\u201d [\u201cLittle Voice\u201d].\u00a0\u00a0Upon each cover, within a red frame, was a drawing accompanied by a caption.\u00a0\u00a0One of these covers showed a child walking along a road in the desert.\u00a0\u00a0There followed the story of this same young boy who was on his way to Teheran.\u00a0\u00a0In later reviews, other drawings illustrated \u201cThe Horrors of Tamburlaine\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Teheran, Tamburlaine, a lone child in a desert landscape\u2026\u00a0\u00a0These themes were to be echoed later by a biblical verse bearing witness to moments of melancholy: \u201c<\/span>Soli! Quia si cadat neminem habebit sublivantem se<\/em>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0-\u201cSorrowful, he who is alone, for if he should fall there will be no-one to raise him back up\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But such melancholy was quickly forgotten and swept away by an impetuous\u00a0<\/span>\u00e9lan vital<\/em>\u00a0when Henry would meet up with his cousin Robert Chanteloup, his elder by five years, at Pieux, the\u00a0Norman\u00a0village his family came from, or in Saint Vaast la Hougue.\u00a0\u00a0Henry conserved a horrid memory of the beach there, of a forced dunking in an ice cold sea, and the feeling of shame at the flock of spectators drawn by the wailing cries of a small child on the point of suffocation from cold and indignation.\u00a0\u00a0Henry preferred the visits with his cousins, the Menants and the Chanteloups, with whom his Norman peasant\u2019s common sense and love of the soil flourished.\u00a0\u00a0With Robert he shared the memory of frolicking about in the fields and of being cheated out of a meal, the victims of their dear aunt Am\u00e9lie\u2019s unswerving sense of principle.\u00a0\u00a0That day, the Petithenrys had been invited to the Pieux\u2019s residence and had arrived a good two hours late.\u00a0\u00a0As soon as he arrived, Robert had told Henry about the rabbit that was being prepared, whose delicate aroma had excited him all morning.\u00a0\u00a0Just as they were sitting down to table, however, Aunt Am\u00e9lie peremptorily declared that one could no longer eat rabbit at three in the afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to his position at the\u00a0<\/span>Bonne Presse<\/em>, Emile Petithenry made a comfortable living, and all the more so, as having served as \u201cstraw man\u201d for the \u201cAssumptionists\u201d during the \u201cTrial of Twelve\u201d, the latter made a constant showing of their gratitude.\u00a0\u00a0At the beginning of the century, the Assumptionists owned a building at #8 Rue Francois Premier, that had been sequestrated ever since the passing of the bill of 1905, but whose chapel and outbuildings remained at the disposition of the good Catholic society of the neighborhood who still gathered there on holidays.\u00a0\u00a0In one of the rooms a stock of beautiful gilt-edged breviaries awakened an envious longing in Henry, who sought to appropriate a copy for himself.\u00a0Father Honor\u00e9, despite his indulgence for this young companion, thereupon threatened that he would \u201crun into serious trouble with the state\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0By way of consolation the good father provided for his entry into a movie hall partly owned by the church.\u00a0\u00a0Once there however, it was the cashier\u2019s turn to contest the validity of the tokens that Father Honor\u00e9 had given him.\u00a0\u00a0This didn\u2019t entirely prevent Henry from acquiring a degree of acquaintance with what one might call \u201ccinema\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Emile Petithenry had kidney trouble and his health deteriorated year after year.\u00a0\u00a0He died in 1912 or 1913.\u00a0Despite the support of their friends at the\u00a0<\/span>Bonne Presse<\/em>, his death was the source of significant worries for Am\u00e9lie.\u00a0\u00a0She had been unable to adopt Henry due to his father\u2019s opposition, and the latter had now withdrawn into a hostile silence.\u00a0The Assumptionists suggested to Am\u00e9lie that she ought to make a trip to\u00a0England\u00a0where she could find work in a Catholic college.\u00a0\u00a0Henry was enchanted by the idea of such a trip.\u00a0\u00a0A new entourage of friends, the grandeur of the liturgical songs\u2026 these were like so many glimpses of another world.\u00a0\u00a0Alas! The plan fell through.<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry thus returned to the Rue de Grenelle, to his friends from the Rochefoucauld, and to his math teacher, who was happy to reclaim his most promising student.in mental\u00a0arithmetic.\u00a0\u00a0The war was approaching, bringing hard times with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin \u00a0Translated by\u00a0Matthew Evans-Cockle Henry came into the world on April 14th1903, at #47 Avenue Bosquet in\u00a0Paris.\u00a0\u00a0He was the first-born [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3084,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3164","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMemories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Memories from the Childhood of Henry Corbin, translated by Matthew Evans-Cockle.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amiscorbin.com\/en\/biography\/memories-from-the-childhood-of-henry-corbin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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